The present invention relates to a transfer assembly.
Such transfer assemblies are generally known in the prior art and are used in cases where large numbers of products have to be removed from a supply conveyor and have to be placed elsewhere. Placing products elsewhere may comprise placing them in some form of packaging, but may also comprise “narrowing” a wide row of products to form a narrower row of products.
If the supply conveyor has a large capacity, it has been found to be practical to use various transfer robots, such as pick-and-place robots. In certain embodiments, these are arranged in such a manner that certain transfer robots are situated upstream with respect to other robots. This means that the first robot which is furthest upstream carries out most of the transfer work while the robot which is situated furthest downstream mainly functions as a safeguard to prevent products from not being transferred, which is undesirable. This is preferably controlled by a control unit, making it possible to load the robot which is furthest downstream to a greater degree by monitoring the products to be transferred.
The use of several transfer robots is prompted by the fact that more or less standardized robots are becoming more readily available, usable and increasingly more inexpensive.
It is possible for the transfer robot to place the grasped product on a further conveyor belt which is situated next to the supply conveyor and functions as discharge conveyor. It is possible that a further conveyor belt is present on either side of the conveyor belt and parallel thereto. This is then preferably smaller than the supply conveyor so that a wide row of products which comes, for example, from an oven or the like is configured to form a narrower row. In this case, such belts or other conveyor belts which run parallel to the supply conveyors can move in the same direction as the supply conveyor or opposite thereto.
Another proposal which is known from the prior art is a discharge conveyor which extends at right angles to the supply conveyor.
With products such as food products, but also with other products which are subjected to a (final) treatment on a wide treatment path, such as an oven or the like, the discharge conveyors used in the process are becoming increasingly wide because the capacity of the treatment device steadily increases. This means that the capacity of the transfer robots and discharge conveyor becomes increasingly important in order to be able to transfer large numbers of products.
In order to use the capacity of the transfer robots as efficiently as possible, the path to be travelled by each robot from the supply conveyor to the discharge position has to be as short as possible. However, on the other hand, sufficient measures need to be taken in order to ensure that products which have to be transferred are indeed all placed.
NL 1000675 discloses a transfer device in which a number of discharge belts are arranged next to a supply belt.